Sudan seeks South African mediation with Chad
April 11, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on Wednesday he was counting on South African mediation to help contain tensions with Chad after recent border clashes between Sudan and its western neighbour.
Bashir was speaking at a joint press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki who was wrapping up a visit to Sudan.
“President Mbeki has always had contacts with Chad on ways to contain the tensions between both our countries and these contacts are continuing,” Bashir told reporters.
“God willing, these contacts will yield positive results,” he said, a day after an incursion by the Chadian army into Sudanese territory in pursuit of rebels.
Khartoum said 17 of its troops were killed in the clash, while Chad speaks of 30 killed on both sides.
Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi was to send an envoy, Abdelsalem Triki, to Sudan and Chad on Wednesday for talks aimed at easing tensions between the two countries.
“Chad is committed to improving and normalising relations with Sudan,” Triki told reporters in N’Djamena after a meeting with Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno.
A senior Chadian foreign ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Foreign Minister Ahmat Allami had received Sudanese ambassador Abdallah Acheikh in N’Djamena and “expressed the regrets of the Chadian government over the incident.”
But a top Sudanese official said Wednesday that Chad needed to offer guarantees its troops would not cross into Sudanese territory in the future.
“Apologies are not enough… there must be guarantees that such an aggression should not take place in the future,” Foreign Undersecretary Mutref Sikkeik told Sudan Television.
“Some of our troops and civilians have been killed or injured and property of civilians has been looted… We cannot be satisfied with apologies and we will therefore lodge a complaint against Chad with the UN and other regional organisations,” Sikkeik said.
At the news conference in Khartoum, Mbeki did not bring up the tensions between Sudan and Chad.
Instead, he lauded an agreement between Khartoum, the African Union and the United Nations over the second phase of a three-stage plan floated last year by former UN chief Kofi Annan aimed at beefing up AU peacekeepers in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur.
“The question is how to finance this,” Mbeki said of the second phase which involves sending some 3,000 soldiers and civilian personnel to Darfur to offer technical and logistical support to the African force.
The United Nations is due to hold its next meeting on Darfur in New York on April 16 and 17 to examine the details of the second phase.
Sudan has only objected to one part of the phase, which concerns the use of helicopter gunships.
The third and most contentious phase of the plan is supposed to lead to the deployment of UN peacekeepers to prop up the under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000-strong AU force, which has so far failed to quell the bloodshed.
According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced in Darfur since fighting erupted in February 2003. Some sources say the death toll is much higher.
Mbeki also said he was encouraged by the implementation of a peace accord signed in January 2005 to end a decades-long civil war between the north and south of Sudan, after having spent a day in Juba, the southern capital, with First Vice President Salva Kiir.
“Sudan and the government of south Sudan have demonstrated full commitment to implementing the (peace deal),” Mbeki said.
The South African president who heads an international commission which oversees the reconstruction of southern Sudan, called on donor countries to “fulfil their commitments.”
(AFP)